THIS year’s Oscars were another good night for Bournemouth-trained film-making talent – even if they didn’t do much good for the dignity of the Academy Awards.

Bournemouth graduates had a hand in two of the big movies to come away with statues.

Around 25 Bournemouth University (BU) graduates worked on The Jungle Book, which was awarded the Best Visual Effects prize. And five graduates from Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) worked on the costumes for the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which earned an Oscar for their designer.

This year’s Oscars were described as the worst for British talent in a decade. But they are likely to go down in history for the wrong reasons, after the Best Picture was wrongly announced as being La La Land before the title was given to the correct winner, Moonlight.

The BU graduates on The Jungle Book worked for two different companies – MPC, which is based in London and Canada, and Weta, based in New Zealand.

Sofronis Efstathiou, a principal lecturer in the National Centre for Computer Animation at the university, said: “BU graduates have a long history of success at the Oscars, and other high-profile award ceremonies, and this year was no exception.

“It’s amazing to witness our graduates achieve such great things, using the skills and talent they developed here to work on award-winning films at the highest level. We are incredibly proud of all the achievements of our alumni - those who have worked on films that won or were nominated for Oscars this year, as well as those that were not shortlisted.”

Mr Efstathiou said the choice of The Jungle Book as a winner was a good one. “In terms of technology and character and creature effects and environment, there’s a whole bunch of stuff in there which is quite advanced and is certainly pushing the current way of working within digital film – so I think they’ve done a great job,” he added.

Five graduates of AUB’s BA course in costume and performance design worked on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which earned costume designer Colleen Atwood an Oscar.

They are: Kathryn Avery (crowd standby), Katy Fitzsimons (maker), Diane Logel (daily), Gemma Rasmussen (maker) and Robert Sutherland (maker).

PricewaterhouseCoopers, which counts and collates the votes for the Academy Awards, has apologised for its part in the blunder which saw the wrong film initially announced as Best Picture.

The firm said: “The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected.

“We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred.”